Transmission #7

as on a darkling plain, where ignorant armies clash by night

We Are Collateral Damage

The Crime

Status: SOLVED (see Transmission #6)

Sequence of Events

THE crime was solved (the sinking of a barge), but a new crime was discovered (Dyer’s theft of the original transmissions), and a new character (Aaron) is in mortal peril.

People are still in danger but the Pools have been refreshed

Final Report

Victim: Austin Kitrell Perpetrator: By water, Deep ones; by air, agents of the Great Race Kingsport Yacht Club, October 1933Motive: Obtain the Red Box stored on Kitrell’s leased boatOpportunity: Kitrell in jail, stars are right, the police security on the crime scene at the Yacht club has been lax.Means: The agents of the Great Race used lightning guns (resulting in burns), and the Deep Ones tore at the sides of the ship. They made off with the Red Box. At dawn the next morning, a chance encounter between smuggling boats of the Marcuzzos and the Walsh gang resulted in a firefight, with the surprising obliteration of the Walsh gang’s boat. Where the Box is now has not been established.Mythos Angle: The crime was done by Mythos creatures and human pawns manipulated by the psychic great race.

Session Recap

Rose and Alice

- Kitrell is desperate to find out what happened to the Red Box on his boat.
- He wants to escape this world before some unknown catastrophe sweeps over it
- He wants to take Alice with him
- Rose is curious as to what happened to her when the time sickness knocked her out, and she woke up without the Tears of Azathoth in her possession. Trust was violated.
- She is also suspicious about Lanfer’s motives for hiding the book for so long.
- To follow up on these leads

The Guys

- the boys are in the smoldering ruins of Lars F_____ house, in the wake of a lightning strike that killed the independent scholar
- 3 members of the Marcuzzo gang show up to get Lars’ report about a strange red piece of wood with Egyptian heiroglyphics on it (which match the heiroglyphics on Document #5)
- Elio is no fool: he knows the cop is wise to the weird and lets him know that weird lightning strikes have been messing up his life
- Rose and Alice overhear Winters’ call into the station, sus out his locale and head over

Welcome to the Faculty

- New hire Aaron ____ finds himself at a card party at the house of Dyer. His partner for bridge is the drunken Doctor. Dyer is gambling recklessly and at the conclusion of the game almost lets slip an anti-Semitic slur. The dissenters’ religious toleration is part of the Miskatonic’s Unitarian heritage, but a stain of WASP snobbery is just as much a part of the University’s culture.
- Freeborn, the Communist anthropologist, sees this as an opportunity to win an ally in his personal agenda against Dyer. He meets Aaron and reveals to him a transcript of Document #5. He points out the figure of Nyarlathotep standing next to the red Hierophant from the Tarot. (A similar constellation of figures is on the piece of wood Lars F_____ was looking at at Elio Marcuzzo’s request [also why does a linguist have mobster pals?])
- The two of them agree to check out other documents on campus. They arrive minutes behind Dyer who has removed the safe from the Inquiry’s office with an acetyline torch! They trail him via motorbike down to Ioannes, a seaside town midway between Kingsport and Innsmouth and base for Walsh’s smuggling operation.
- a deranged old Swedish sailor accosts the two, and he is bearing a hook on his hand in a strange echo of the contents of Document 5
- this takes place while Aaron notices Dyer in a confab with Walsh’s much younger wife, Dyer handing over the safe, trying to make his exit, and then getting dragged to a cellar by a brute
- cliffhanger: Aaron jumping through the window while Freeborn unloads a pistol on the sailor

They Cover the Waterfront

- down at the KYC: Rose and Alice sneak off into the building to “use the ladies’” and they break into Oliver Hamilton’s office. There, they liberate some old records documenting the Hamiltons’ long history of persecution of witches and dissenters.
- they are interrupted by 2 Deep Ones and much desperate fleeing ensues
- as Angus, Duree, and Winters survey the sunken wreck of Kitrell’s boat they are overwhelmed by a wave of nauseatingly disfigured crabs creeping out of the wreckage
- the 2 Deep Ones cannot find their first prey and rush to the docks
- the fleeing characters are accosted by 2 members of Walsh’s gang bearing strange guns and speaking with the weird static-y voices that characters have been hearing for past weeks
- the two possessed gangsters run out to get the Deep Ones, who have been dispatched by Angus and Winters: satisfied that the Deep Ones are dead, the possessing intelligences depart their hosts in a flash of lightning, leaving two disoriented members of Walsh’s gang behind
- whoever these possessing intelligences are, they have been flitting between hosts and assuming different disguises to stymie Walsh/Zora’s activities and to get a hold of the Red Box that was stored on Kitrell’s boat

Stuff that is on my mind:

- what is going to happen to Aaron, Freeborn and Dyer?
- what is the neurologist Davis doing down in Ioannes with the man who just betrayed the Inquiry to a gangster’s wife?
- what exactly happened to the Red Box when the Walsh gang’s boat exploded during a firefight with the Marcuzzos? Part of it has been recovered (the fragment in Lars F’s possession at the time of his electrocution

Stuff we have figured out

- will the crew continue to succeed in driving the time dillations away? you did for a while but now they are back in spades — Rose just got hit again as the electrical dudes escaped
- WhTF are these cylindrical winged guys in the Basel Codex? — the Elder Race uncovered by Dyer in his 1931 expedition to THEMOUNTAINS OF MADNESS!
- WhTF is the dude who can scan your body while talking to you over the phone? — apparently the electrically-gifted psychic lightning dudes (the Great Race)

Document Review

Fully Investigated

Weirdness #1: The Heirophant

- some sort of dread deity with a red hook or flail
- the jackal near him is Nyarlathotep, his herald

Weirdness #2 The Marcuzzos

- a straightforward a crime syndicate linked to the New York mobs
- long-running feud with the Walsh gang
- curious as to the meaning of the red pieces of wood pulled from the wreck of a Walsh boat

Weirdness #2 The Walsh gang

- linked to the weird town of Ioannes
- link to the strange aquatic monsters or “Deep Ones” and have been interbreeding with them
- gang is still going strong despite death of the founder
- why were they so concerned about happenings around Dr. Armitage’s house and the Wasp-infested old house out near Dunwich?